Last of the Mo'Ricans, The

Another pleasant surprise.

in my mind this edit should not work BUT it does....

It is was breath of fresh air to not have Carlo Brigante saddled with the love story and it plays extraordinary well. The trims are well judged and for the most part seamless. The narrative does feel a touch rushed in a few places butthe new focus works well despit this..

I do think that the post seequence of removed scene to illustrate some of what was removed was very ill judged indeed...but I am not deducting any points for that...just an observation...and if this was submitted today, I think it would have to have an end credit roll, but again, just an observation...no deductions.

Excellent and Recommended to those who want concentrated Pacino without fluff.

Recut of de Palma’s “Carlito’s Way,” removing the unnecessary love element. What was the point of the romance angle anyway? To lure females into the theater? C’mon, Pacino was still a sexy draw at that time. One big plus is the shortening of a bloated storyline to a quick moving character sweep.

Video - 688 X 304p MPEG-4. This is a rather “red” palette and that can sometimes be a problem. Not so here. The editing was solid throughout. The image broke up a couple of times, which I chalked up to my viewing method (putting file on flash drive and playing on BluRay via USB). Image is a bit soft.

Audio - MP3 128 kbps. 2-Channel stereo. No subs. This is a noisy movie. Dialogue remained clear, even during club sequences. I listened using headphones.

Narrative - Gail? What Gail? Who’s Gail? The story is now very male oriented, with no emotional baggage aside from character’s stupidity. Surprising how well the narrative flowed with no coherence issues. The editor provided outtakes at the end. They add nothing only to kill the mood.

Enjoyment - This edit pushed de Palma’s wannabee yarn into Neo-Noir territory. Had Adabisi gone the black n white route, this might have made a decent Noir in and of itself.

The main problem I have with this film, and have always had, is the sheer lack of intelligence of all characters involved. Indeed, the lead, the legendary Carlito, displays less than stellar streets smarts. From misreading his allies, to disrespecting and underestimating the up and coming next generation. Hard to feel sympathy for a fool.

The opening courtroom sequence always felt wrong. Carlito had a loud, screaming, over-the-top manner more in line with Pacino’s “Scent Of A Woman” from the previous year.

I liked this version. I enjoyed this edit. I still dislike Carlito Brigante, though.

I always thought the Gail moments were really stomach churningly awful, the slow motion zooms and shmoltzy music made me puke, and put a real halt to one of the top 5 dead or alive gangster films ever. I'd like to thank the editor for making a dream come true. The pace is relentless, keeps the adrenaline pumping the whole time, really well done. Great choice for a title too. One minor detail which was unavoidable but mentioning anyway, is at the end Luis Guzman turns up for no reason with Benny Blanco, its the only time when the new edit didnt make sense, which is very rare for a fan edit to be so solid the whole way through, this one tiny detail didnt really effect how much I loved this cut.
Some glitches, no big deal, would like to see HD version. Liked how he said he cut 55 minutes out, I really didn't realise as it feels like an entire film, and liked how he added the cuts at the end (I didn't watch cuz it would have killed the buzz I got from the new edit, but good idea.)
This edit is BIG TIME!

Hollywood has a real obsession with shoehorning a love story into every movie ever made, whether it needs one or not (apparently to attract female viewers, which I find patronizing). Carlito's Way is not the worst example, but still Adabisi's edit shows how well it works without the romance, resulting in a movie that's lean and mean and to the point. Unfortunately the footage only allows so much, so one scene had to be recreated by repeating shots over and over again in an almost comical way. Maybe getting a 1080p source and cropping the shots to SD would have allowed for a better result. Either way, I enjoyed the edit overall, and was technically very good save for a couple music transitions (from the credits to the beginning, and from the shooting to the epilogue). Video quality was good for an .avi file but had a few encoding glitches here and there. Imperfect but recommended.